A Christmas Gambol

by Joan Smith

  Cicely stood on alone behind the screen, stunned. Is this what people, Montaigne’s friends, thought of her? They were already cooler to him than before. Why had she been so selfish, taking Montaigne away from his work for practically a whole week, only to amuse her? She was destroying his reputa­tion. She would return to Elmdale at once.

  The revisions to her novel were done, the pan­tomime was in rehearsal, the party at Hastings had been canceled. There was nothing to keep her here, yet she hung on, waiting, hoping.

  Montaigne had in­vited her for a few days to attend Murray’s dinner party, and she had turned it into an extended visit. Her head ached, and she suddenly felt nauseous. She summoned up her courage and went out in search of Montaigne.

  She found him not far from the doorway, waiting for her.

  “Hurry up, slowpoke!” he said. “The waltzes are just about to begin.”

  “I don’t feel well, Montaigne. Would you mind taking me home?”

  He could see at a glance that she was pale, with a drawn look about the eyes. He said at once, “Get your wrap. I’ll make our excuses to Lady Castlereagh.”

  “What is the matter?” he asked as soon as they were in the carriage and on their way to Berkeley Square. “A tad too much wine?”

  “I have a wretched headache,” she said in a wan voice.

  “I’ll send for Dr. Knighton. Let us hope it is only a cold. A week in bed, and you’ll be cured in time for the Christmas pantomime. Of course you won’t be fit to travel for a while yet. This might get your papa to London.”

  His efforts to cheer her only cast her into deeper gloom.

  “I would like to go home tomorrow, Montaigne. There is no reason for me to stay. I’ve done what I came here to do.”

  “Why, you have scarcely scratched the surface of what London has to offer. And you haven’t bought your fur-lined cape yet. There are dozens of places we still have to visit.”

  “You are very kind, but I am imposing by staying so long, keeping you away from your work.”

  “There is no work for the next couple of weeks. The House is recessed.”

  “I am going home,” she said firmly.

  Montaigne began to suspect something had hap­pened at the Castlereaghs’. The cats had been sharpening their claws in glee over the Morland affair.

  “Did someone say something to you?” he asked. His voice held a sharp edge of annoyance, not at Cicely, but at whoever had spoken to her. “Some slur about that business with the Morlands? I know Meg was spreading the tale, the clunch. She paid a special call on Debora to get all the details. I shall ring a peal over her.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “What is it, then? You were in high feather when we went to the party an hour ago. Now you are cast into gloom, ready to rush home to Elmdale. Something happened.” He remembered seeing the McCurdle sisters coming out of the ladies’ parlor just minutes before Cicely. “Did the McCurdle ladies say something to you?”

  “Is that who they were?”

  “I thought as much! What did they say?”

  “They didn’t say anything to me. I overheard them gossiping. You were right. I shouldn’t have stuck my nose into the Morlands’ business. But it is no matter. It is time to go home in any case. Any little scandal will only be a nine days’ wonder. It won’t reflect on you, once I’m out of your hair.”

  “So that’s what they said. That you are ruining my career, the ninnyhammers.”

  He laughed and tried to talk away her fears. No one paid any heed to the McCurdles. The incident would be forgotten in a day or two. London was a hotbed of gossip. But Cicely was determined. When they reached Berkeley Square she was still insist­ing that she would leave the next day.

  Montaigne accompanied her into the house. “Why don’t you return to the party? It is still early,” she pointed out.

  “I have something I want to say to you.”

  The butler took their things and they went into the saloon, where a fire burned in the grate. It was welcome after the cold winds of December. The room was warm, but it didn’t remove the chill from Cicely’s heart. She gave Montaigne an accus­ing look. A moment’s consideration told her that the quickest way to get rid of him was to hear him out. She felt he was only going to try to talk her into staying longer and was prepared to resist his urgings to the last gasp.

  Montaigne seemed nervous. He poured two glasses of wine, handed her one, and emptied his own glass in one shot. Then he put the glass down, straightened his shoulders, cleared his throat, and began.

  “I hadn’t meant to speak until I had an opportu­nity to discuss it with Mr. Caldwell first. Sissie, I want to marry you.”

  “Oh no!” she howled. His businesslike pronounce­ment sounded strained. Nothing in either his face or his voice suggested love. It was the voice of duty, just what those two ladies had prophesied. He felt responsible for the mess she had made of her repu­tation. Being a gentleman, he was ready to pay the price.

  His first expression of shock at her outburst soon turned to uncertainty. “It cannot come as a com­plete surprise to you after the events of the past weeks?” he said questioningly.

  “How dare you! Are you implying I schemed to force you into it?”

  “Certainly not! That was not my meaning. I think we would deal very well together.”

  “No, you do not think anything of the sort. And you don’t fool me, either. You think I have compromised myself, and it will end up in your dish, since you brought me to London.”

  “I love you, damn it!”

  “It sounds like it!” she shot back. “If you could see the scowl on your face! Oh, I wish I had never come to London. I wish I had never heard of Debora, with her purple eyes, and Morland, with his horrid din­ner parties and diamonds. I am going home tomor­row, Montaigne.”

  “That’s impossible. I can’t get away tomorrow,” he said.

  “We are not quite Siamese twins. I don’t expect you to come with me. If you would just lend me your traveling coach—”

  “The wheels need mending,” he invented.

  “Then I shall take the public coach.”

  “That you will not. I brought you here, and I shall take you home. We can leave in the afternoon. My carriage should be repaired by then.”

  “Very well.”

  “But I wish you would reconsider. I am serious about wanting to marry you, Cicely.”

  She glared. “Don’t patronize me, Montaigne. You might spare me that at least.” She set down her glass and strode from the room, because if she stayed one more minute, she knew the tears would spurt.

  As soon as Montaigne was alone, he unleashed a litany of accomplished curses. As this did not even begin to soothe his wrath, he threw the glass into the grate, where it shattered with a very satisfying crash. He strode into the hallway, snatched up his hat and cape before the butler could reach them, and let himself out into the cold wind.

  He drove straight to his own mansion on Grosvenor Square. He knew he had made a botch of his proposal. He also knew that Cicely was too proud to accept an offer tinged with obligation on his part. He would have to prove to her satisfaction that he truly loved her. She had called him a roman­tic lunatic. Very well, then, he would live up to his reputation and contrive a romantically lunatic method to prove it.

  What weighed on his mind as he made his tenta­tive plans was whether she loved him. A genuine re­fusal was a possibility, and must be taken into account. With luck, he should have a reply from her papa in the morning mail, and the completely outra­geous plan that was hatching in his devious mind would not have to be executed. But if Caldwell re­fused Montaigne’s invitation to London to attend the Christmas pantomime ...

  He rooted through desk and cupboards in search of a map of England and his copy of the Traveler’s Guide. These were not necessary for a trip to Elmdale. He knew that route like the back of his hand. It was the Great North Road that he studied with considerable interest. He marked an X on the map at Chesham
, where his cousin Thorold lived. If Montaigne delayed their departure long enough, they would not get farther than twenty-odd miles tomorrow.

  While Montaigne laid his scheme for her abduc­tion, Cicely asked the servants to bring her trunk down from the attic and began sorting out her pack­ing. Other than her under linens and outer gar­ments, she might as well not have unpacked, she had worn so few of her own outfits. She regretfully left Meg’s dashing gowns hanging in the closet. Each dress brought a memory—and a fresh pang to her heart. There was the green one she had worn to Murray’s dinner, when she brought Sir Giles around her finger. Here the rose one she had worn to the theater. The ivory and chicken-skin fan and the peacock fan, retrieved from Morland’s grate and not so very burned, went in along with the rest, a reminder of her folly. Anne’s blue stockings were placed in Cook’s graduated beaker and added to the trunk.

  She would have liked to get to know Debora better. There was more to her than her violet eyes. Cicely suspected it was her being enceinte and Dick’s lack of concern that made Debora appear ap­athetic. She had entered into conning the duke with excellent spirits. After her confinement, she might have proved a good friend. Naturally Montaigne would not have fallen in love with a lady who had only a beautiful face to attract him.

  It was fatally easy to distract her thoughts to Montaigne. He couldn’t possibly love her. He was of­fering only out of a sense of duty. How stiffly he had spoken, how reluctantly. “I want to marry you,” he had said. Just cropped out bluntly with the neces­sary words, no lovemaking. He hadn’t even told her he loved her, except in that horrid, angry way. “I love you, damn it!” What sort of a proposal was that? It was not the way Ravencroft had proposed to Eugenie.

  Cicely had seen too much of arranged marriages to consign herself to such a fate. And if a lady were so foolish as to actually love a husband who did not love her, the situation would be completely intol­erable. Indifferences would soon sink to despisement. Much better to go home to Elmdale and try to find some small measure of peace by writing it all up disguised as fiction.

  She had come to London to find out about life, and she had found out—more than she bargained for.

  * * *

  Chapter 20

  The morning post brought Montaigne no reply from his invitation to the Caldwells. The abduction was on. He paid a call on the archbishop of Canterbury and procured a special license to marry with­out the banns being called in church.

  On Berkeley Square, Cicely argued the morning away with Meg and Fairly, who took it as a personal affront that she should leave them just when she had become such an object of curiosity among the ton. Now that Fairly had his arm out of a sling, they were after a new novelty to astound Society.

  Cicely hoped that Montaigne’s vague “afternoon” meant literally after twelve noon. By one o’clock she knew this was not the case. By two, she was becom­ing extremely frustrated at the delay but sat down to lunch with Meg, as Montaigne was obviously lunching elsewhere and Cicely didn’t want to leave with an empty stomach. Immediately after lunch, Fairly left for his club. A few flakes of snow had begun to drift down. Not enough to make travel im­possible, although the leaden sky showed no sign of fair weather in the immediate future.

  At three o’clock, Montaigne’s traveling carriage and team of four finally arrived.

  “Sorry I’m late. I got held up, but we still have a few hours of daylight.”

  Cicely noticed that he was in remarkably good spirits for a gentleman who pretended he didn’t want her to leave. It would be dark within the hour at this time of year. He was delighted to be rid of her, and who should blame him?

  “We’d best be off if we hope to make it home be­fore the storm breaks,” she said peevishly.

  Meg’s sniffs of annoyance gave way to tears and promises to write. Hugs were exchanged and at last the carriage was off.

  Montaigne took the precaution of leaving London by the same route as they had arrived, to prevent Cicely from becoming suspicious. She looked forlornly out the window as the glories of the West End dwindled to the mediocrity of the outskirts of town. She didn’t notice when the carriage veered north. To avoid conversation, she had claimed fatigue and sat with her eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. Montaigne let her rest, happy that she was un­aware of the direction they were taking.

  About an hour later, when they stopped at a toll-gate, Cicely became tired of feigning sleep and opened her eyes.

  “I don’t remember this tollgate,” she said, peering out the window.

  “They all look much alike. The snow is coming down a little faster now,” he added, to distract her.

  A glance at the window showed her the few flakes had turned into a regular snowfall. A spasm of alarm seized her. “What if we have to stop before we get home? Overnight, I mean, at an inn or something.”

  “Then you’ll just have to marry me,” he said, and laughed.

  “It’s not funny, Montaigne!” she scowled. “That is exactly what those McCurdle ladies meant. I shan’t marry you, I don’t care if we have to spend the whole winter alone in some abandoned house.”

  “You would rather destroy my reputation?” he asked, still joking, but with a tinge of concern.

  “Perhaps we should turn back,” she said doubt­fully. “We haven’t gone far.”

  “John Groom will get us through,” Montaigne said firmly.

  His reply convinced Cicely he was happy to be getting her out of town, out of his hair.

  The falling snow made it difficult to see much of the surroundings as the carriage continued on its way north. Before long, the sun had set, to complete the oblivion beyond the carriage. When they came to an intersection, the coachman stopped the car­riage and got out to read the signpost. Curious to see how far they had come, Cicely said, “I’m going to get out.”

  “Better not. You’re only wearing slippers.”

  “The snow hasn’t piled up yet.”

  She opened the door herself and hopped out. Mon­taigne followed her, preparing excuses in case the signpost gave him away, as indeed it did.

  The wind snatched at Cicely’s pelisse and flung it about. Snowflakes whirled through the air, catching in her hair. Where the light from the coachman’s lamp caught them, they sparkled and flashed. Drifted snow gathered against hedges and in ruts in the road, causing splotches of white in the sur­rounding darkness. She peered at the signpost.

  “That sign says St. Albans, Ten Miles,” she exclaimed. “We’re going the wrong way, Montaigne. We are heading north.”

  “Right ahead is our turn off to the west,” he ex­plained. He winked at John Groom over Cicely’s head. “You know the shortcut, Harelson.”

  “Have no fear, lordship. I’ll get you where you want to go.”

  The carriage did soon make a turn. Disoriented in a strange place, Cicely assumed they were heading west. Another turn soon brought them back north­ward. They continued for another hour. The snow came in fits and starts, sometimes forming a moving, lace curtain in the darkness beyond the carriage window, sometimes disappearing. They reached Chesham during a lull in the snowfall. The sign pro­claiming Chesham was large enough to be legible from the carriage. Cicely had to lower the window to read the smaller print below, giving directions to the Great North Road.

  She turned and stared at Montaigne, who was also reading the sign. His expression showed not the least concern, but a definite touch of satisfaction.

  “Montaigne! Is it possible you are kidnapping me?” she asked in a choked voice. She lowered her head to her raised hands and erupted into a strangled burst of laughter.

  As laughter was the last thing Montaigne ex­pected to hear, he easily mistook her response for tears. “Cicely, I can explain!”

  “No, no!” she said, shaking with the effort to con­ceal her soaring joy.

  Montaigne moved to the banquette beside her and drew her into his arms. “How else could I convince you I want to marry you?” he asked.

  “Gretna Gr
een?” she asked in a strangled whisper.

  “If you hate the idea, we can turn back and be in London before midnight. No one need know. I didn’t tell Meg. Don’t cry, my dear. It was a foolish thing for me to do.”

  His arms held her warm and close in the dark­ness of the carriage. When she didn’t draw away, he removed her bonnet and stroked her hair with lov­ing fingers, while soft words of endearment were showered on her.

  “I think I have loved you from the moment you roundly condemned Chaos. Or perhaps it was when you flirted that old slice, Gresham, into pretending he didn’t despise it. You would be happy in London, darling. I could make you happy.”

  Cicely made no reply, but only snuggled her head into the crook of his neck, trying to assimilate that this was really happening, that Montaigne loved her. He tilted her face up to see what expression she wore and saw the laughter there. When she drew her lower lip between her teeth to stifle the merriment, he felt as if he had been kicked in the stomach by a mule. She wasn’t even angry, only laughing at his clownish attempt at romance.

  “I see you are amused at my folly,” he said, stiff with embarrassment. “I’ll tell John Groom to take us to Berkeley Square.”

  “Oh, Monty! How divinely romantic! I could never understand how you wrote Chaos, but I see now you really are perfectly romantic and ridiculous beneath your businesslike facade. Kidnapping, Gretna Green, and a wedding over the anvil! It is worthy of Ravencroft. You must really love me if—”

  His lips seized hers in a passionate kiss, bringing her outpourings to a stop. His strong hands were gentle as they stroked her cheeks and caressed the nape of her neck. They brushed warmly down her throat, as if he had to touch her to confirm that she was there, and happy.

  His gentleness made her feel loved and wanted without feeling threatened by his passion. When she responded warmly to Montaigne’s touch, his arms went around her to crush the breath out of her. Cicely shyly looped her arms around his neck and returned the pressure. It seemed strangely inti­mate to feel his crisp hair between her fingers. A quivering excitement stirred Cicely to the inner­most core of her being. As the kiss deepened, she felt a melting warmth invade her. It grew to an aching, primitive longing as the excitement swelled to consume her in its flames.